Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Could Neill Blomkamp's District 9 be the best SF film in a generation? I think you could make the case for it. Set in an alternate history Johannesburg where a massive alien ship mysteriously appeared over the city in 1982, it more than distinguishes itself on a number of levels.

One unique element is how it upends the genre's alternately triumphalistic and terrifying tropes. Instead of featuring beneficent creatures that come in peace or chitinous horrors eager to rend human flesh, the film's aliens are pitiful refugees struggling to simply survive. They can't stay in their pestilent ship, and earth's inhabitants don't want them to integrate into human society. The solution? They end up segregated in District 9. Only that doesn't entirely quell human concerns, so a private security firm called Multinational United (MNU) gets hired to relocate the aliens to a camp far from civilization. Enter Wikus van de Merwe, a faithful MNU drone who does his work with loads of cheerfulness and a startling lack of perception. He's been tasked with the big move, a massive career bump for him, and everything goes as planned -- at first. Wikus proceeds from one ramshackle hut to another, delivering eviction notices and securing legally binding signatures, until he comes in contact with a strange metal cylinder. A cylinder filled with dark liquid. A cylinder that discharges its contents all over him. Ready or not, things are about to change for Wikus in a big way ...

A second distinction? District 9's cinematic style. My Netflix DVD sleeve described it as cinéma vérité, that jittery documentary style that approximates true-to-life shooting, and that's mostly how it unfolds in the initial scenes. The film begins with a nervous Wikus mugging for the camera as he explains the relocation project. Various pundits and academic experts provide exposition, interspersed with shots of Wikus and his crew moving through the district. And then, quite suddenly, the conceit falls to pieces. I don't want to give any spoilers here, but let's say that once Wikus gets sprayed by that odd fluid the cameras start following him into places they'd never normally have access. Indeed, at least one reviewer noted the radical shift from ostensible documentary to buddy movie shoot-'em-up.

Now, purists might sniff at the shift in subject and tone, but I found it far from fatal. Stories are never composed of only one thing. Form and theme, character and plot, setting and speculative suppositions -- all play their part. While District 9 might've stumbled at one of them, the rest soar. Don't trust my humble opinion alone: The film earned a nomination for best picture at the 82nd Academy Awards.

I mean, you have Children of Men (unless you read the P.D. James novel shortly before watching the film--one of the few cases where you must separate the book and the film, and the film is artistically superior).

On a cerebral level, we also have AI, which was uneven but immensely thoughtful. WALL-E may have suffered from its middle third, but its opening half hour was more moving, entertaining, and gripping than ... well, any SF movie I can think of.

Then there's the quest unique beauty of Minority Report, the fantastic dark action of Serenity, the Japanese anime Ghost in the Shell 2 (skip the first--which is semi-pornographic and much less intelligent--and you'll find a story that is mind-warping, intensely human, innovative, and thoughtful), the shallow exuberance of Star Trek, the all-out puzzle-game of Primer...

District 9 was a solid SF film. (I can't judge the African-ness; a lot of people who grew up in Africa absolutely hated it.) It deserves to be in the middle of the pack, when listing best recent SF films. But there are a lot of better SF movies that have come out in this generation.

I haven't watched Children of Men, mainly because I didn't like the book and I heard the film version was a thinly veiled critique against the Bush administration. Critiques are all well and good, but political works tied to specific figures tend to age very quickly in my view.

AI was wonderful, yet it was terribly uneven plotwise.

Minority Report cheated horribly in its ending, undoing all of the previous philosophizing on free will versus determinism.

Star Trek was fun and nice to look at -- and that's about all.

District 9 put it all together, the enjoyment, the visual beauty, the great performances and the thematic heft. Not to say it's perfect, which is the whole point of my post. Still, it has a vitality I haven't seen in a film in ages.

I actually had to step out of District 9 because the camera shake made me nauseous. For that, I probably would have enjoyed it better on the smaller screen. (Home-grown videos are shaky, but they are also viewed at home, not in theaters).

I honestly can't remember if I took notice of the shift camera-man motif breakage or not while I was feeling sick. I think when they go into the government facility I thought the camera men shouldn't be there and moved on. It really shouldn't have been hard to work around in a believable way though, with some kind of visual notification of which 'lense' was being viewed through (documentary vs omniscient). I remember Memento was half black and white based on whether we were going backwards or forwards in time...

Over-all though, conceptually I thought it was a great sci-fi film. Way more graphic violence (versus suspense) than I was expecting, but very well conceptualized and fascinating.

Yeah, the vérité was pretty jittery. I first noticed the break when Wikus stepped into the shack and got sprayed by the liquid in the canister. I thought, "Wait a second, something just happened to the tone here."

The violence was pretty intense, but the only part that made me cringe was when the Nigerian crime boss got what was coming to him. Ouch. Of course, that may say more about me than the film ...